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Lois Faggion, 87, talks about her rat problem in her Lansing home. Faggion needs help repairing her house to keep them out.
Lansing State Journal

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Lois Faggion, 87, walks into her home on Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018, in Lansing. She says she needs help getting rats removed from her home. The house has not been maintained as well as it once was since her husband Bob died 20 years ago.(Photo: Nick King/Lansing State Journal)Buy Photo

LANSING – Lois Faggion is on her way to getting what she desperately needs: A good night’s rest free from fear of rats.

Lois, 87, startled many last week when she revealed she had to use a hammer to kill two dozen rats inside her longtime Westside Neighborhood home built in 1900. The rodents were ensnared in glue traps but still alive and squealing.

She didn’t want to just throw them alive in the trash as instructed by her pest control company. She felt she had no alternative. She was desperate to stay in the house where she raised her family. It's been her home for nearly six decades.

Perhaps it was the grandmotherly image of Lois listening to the rats while she tried to sleep. Or her nerve in killing them to put them out of her misery.

The cavalry has arrived.

Neighbors set up a GoFundMe account to help her. Three nonprofits and two good Samaritans who wish to remain anonymous — a real estate developer and a businessman, driven by his Christian faith, who is willing to help pay for repairs — have offered assistance.

She’s even gotten a pair of hearing aids donated after the rats spilled a bowl of rice where the hearing aids were stored to keep them dry and one of the hearing aids went missing.

“It’s one call after another,” said Sondra Faggion, Lois’ daughter. “It’s just incredible.”

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Lois Faggion, 87, checks a rodent trap on Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018, at her home in Lansing. Faggion's says she needs help to rid her home of a rat invasion. The house has not been maintained as well as it once was since her husband Bob died 20 years ago.(Photo: Nick King/Lansing State Journal)

A construction crew from the real estate developer showed up at her house to assess the problem after the Lansing State Journal story first appeared online. They pledged to get the rats out and seal up any holes that allowed them to come in.

“He told me on the phone that I don’t have to worry about anything. The holes are going to be patched,” Sondra recalled. “I bawled. I couldn’t even talk on the phone. He said ‘Your mom’s not going to have to worry about having another rat in that house for the rest of her life.’”

A new pest control company, Eradico Pest Services, hired by the developer, set up live traps around the exterior of the house. The work to weatherize and plug holes in the foundation and around windows and doors will start after they are ensured the rats are no more.

Lois and Sondra believe rats disturbed by road and sewer work came up through an old sewer line in the basement that had rusted out. Lansing officials downplayed the possibility that underground work triggered the invasion.

A neighbor who set up the Go Fund Me account, Jana Nicol, moved to the neighborhood three years ago. She said she was warned by a friend who worked in pest control to cover her basement drains to keep rats out from the old sewer lines that run under the neighborhood. She placed a patio brick on one drain.

But she said she's not heard of a widespread problem with the rodents in the neighborhood. Lois and Sondra, however, said one neighbor, a renter, also reported rats and quickly moved.

Lois Faggion, 87, holds the hammer that she used to put rats stuck in a trap out of their misery while talking about her rodent invasion on Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018, in Lansing. She says she needs help getting the rats removed from her home. The house has not been maintained as well as it once was since her husband Bob died 20 years ago.(Photo: Nick King/Lansing State Journal)

Lois said her house has fallen into disrepair in the 20 years since her husband, Bob, died. Since his death, three of her five children have died. She depends on Sondra who lives in Lansing but has health problems. One son lives out of state.

She survives on Social Security, a small pension check and some food assistance.

Jana Nicol, who set up the fund, said her neighborhood is a good one.

“I love the sense of community and how everybody cares for each other,” she said.

She said there’s discussion of helping Lois paint her house or provide whatever she needs.

A state employee, Jana used to work for the now defunct Greater Lansing Housing Coalition and for a foster grandparent program. She said home repairs, particularly roofing, are a need for older residents who want to spend their final years in their homes.

Rick Gamber, a close neighbor to Lois, said he was disturbed by the story – not because of bad publicity for his neighborhood but that he didn’t know she needed help.

He’s now acting as the liaison between the neighborhood raising funds and Lois.

“How you can live so close to someone and know so little about what they need? I’m sure there are a lot of Loises out there,” he said.

Lois said she at first didn’t want anybody to know about her rodent issue. But she said her experience going public shows that Lansing has a heart.

“If they’re having problems, maybe they’ll have the guts enough to do the same thing,” she said. “It might open the book.”